


A Four Letter Word

by asongstress1422



Series: Fire in the Stars [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Depression, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Hope, Memories, Sad, Tears, greif
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-14 08:52:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13586607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asongstress1422/pseuds/asongstress1422
Summary: Even when Rey is stuck in her own darkness, she radiates light





	A Four Letter Word

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for all the support on this series!!!
> 
> Part 5

The Resistance is abandoning the outpost, leaving only ruble and a field of hastily made graves. Some of the markers have names, the few remaining survivors knowing of the deceased enough to name them. Most are blank, everyone that could remember them buried beside them.

Rey stops in front of the one she is looking for. Two names are scratched into the dried wood, she can tell it is Finn’s lettering, jammed into the earth at the top of the mound and feels tears prickly at the back of her eyes.

She holds them back. Everything inside her cold, like her body after the snow planet. She remembers the pins and needle pain as her fingers regained feeling and doesn’t relish the idea of when her mind defrosts. But that is not now, now she is numb.

People call to her, the ship is ready for launch. The General is requesting them to rejoin the main group quickly. She hears the them and knows she needs to obey but it is so hard to get herself to move. Guilt weighs heavy on her.

She needs to be stronger than this. With friends and a safe place to sleep she has become lax in protecting herself but no more. She needs to build up her walls so that nothing can penetrate them. So that nothing can hurt her. They will be her protection against the evils of this world.

She lays a ration packet against the marker. It is a useless getster, a needless waste of resources, but it is all she had to give.

When she turns away, she does not look back.

* * *

 A dark fog is her constant companion and she goes though her days like trying to walk through miles of loose sand. She ignores the concerned looks her friends give her instead choosing to spend more and more time alone building her walls, training, or tinkering in the scrap pile they brought back from the fallen outpost. Trying to make something out of the destruction.

At night she can’t stop her mind from wandering and she remembers. Memories send pain ripping through her like a plasma bullet, hot and burning, and she can’t keep herself from falling apart.

At night her walls crumble like so much ash and he comes for her. He always comes, slipping through her cracks, their pain calling each other across the galaxy. She hates him for it, for him choosing to be there now when he refused so many times before.

The first night he tries to comfort her, tries to gather her close and hold her like he always does. She throws every item she lays her hand on at him, driving him back with sheer ferocity; pillows, blankets, books, scrap, tools. The last thing, a moss coated rock from Takodana, catches him on his chin and he flinches.

“Leave!” she screams with her every action, violence seeming to be the only thing he understands.

Standing in a mess of her possessions he looks at her with damp eyes. She doesn’t back down, simply snarls all the harder at him.

He finally looks away and nods, closing down their bond until he winks out of her existence.

She collapses on the mattress, sans bedding, with everything tangible representatives of her life in a pile against the wall, and sobs uncontrollably until she stops remembering.

When she wakes in the morning, head pounding, eyes gritty, her room is back in perfect order. Her books stacked in their haphazard pile on the bench seat by the porthole. The scrap in a neat out of the way pile with her tools. The rock in its customary place of importance on the small window seal, and she is wrapped in her blanket.

She runs from her room not daring to look back. It takes her days to re-enter it. Her resolve weakened by so small an action.

She can’t bear to be so weak.

* * *

  _“I’m sorry about the boy,”_ he says softly one night.

She is lying in bed staring at the ceiling as tears lay drying on her temples.

Logically she knows that children die, she was almost one of them. She knows that war and conflict are constants, but logic holds no place in her grief. A child was alive, a whole planet was _alive,_  and now they are not because of her inaction in killing a monster. “You and your worthless words can go rot.”

He doesn't say anything else but she can feel him there, hovering just on the corner of her conscious and it's like a knife to her heart. Him being there but not, empty words from an empty place. It’s too much.

“I can’t keep doing this,” she says closes her eyes. “I can’t keep seeing you in my dreams and pretend that everything is going to be alright, that a war doesn’t exist between us where people, _children_ , are dying because of our actions. I want you to leave and I want you to stay gone. The next time we see eachother, we will be nothing more but enemies.”

“I’m not your enemy, Rey,” he says.

“You’re wrong,” her voice breaks on the lie but she swallows against it, instead focusing on her convictions. “I can’t keep standing by and watch you hurt people. As long as you are Kylo Ren, the monster in the mask, I will fight against you to bring peace to the galaxy.”

“So you mean to kill me,” there is a bite of pained, self deprecating, amusement in his voice. “You may be the only one who can.”

Her heart stutters at the thought. Even now, after everything, she knows she could no more bring herself to kill him then she could herself. She feels tears leak from her eyes again.

 _And here I thought they were all gone._ She presses a hand over her face to try and hide them.

“You’re still holding out hope for me,” he seemed shocked by the assessment.

“No,” she says turning over so she is facing the wall even as everyone else piece of her screams ‘ _yes’_ like some fool. She’s sick of playing the fool, of believing in fantasies. “Holding hope hurts too much.”

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what your thought about it :) :) :)
> 
> (Ps. if anyone wants to help me write better summaries for any of these parts that would be great!! I'm not bad at summaries, persay, but I'm finding it really hard to write them for stories that are so small without giving things away.)


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